When writing about the self, the inner state becomes the last frontier. Come explore the borderland between what is known and what is yet-to-be discovered via the writing process across genres with these four Philly authors: Jiordan Castle, Alina Pleskova, Eshani Surya, and Joseph Earl Thomas.
About the Authors:
Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a memoir in verse. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the LA-based food and culture magazine Compound Butter. Originally from New York, she has an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and lives in Philadelphia.
Alina Pleskova is a poet, editor, and Moscow-born immigrant turned proud Philadelphian. She co-edits bedfellows magazine and is a 2020 and 2022 Leeway Foundation grant awardee. Her first full-length poetry collection, Toska, was published by Deep Vellum in June 2023 and nominated for a 2024 Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook, What Urge Will Save Us, was published in 2017, and her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Thrush, Peach Mag, the tiny, and elsewhere.
Eshani Surya is a disabled, brown writer interested in how we share love while navigating the complications, trauma, and radical self-acceptance inherent to marginalization. Her novel, RAVISHING, will be published by Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic.
Joseph Earl Thomas is the author of Sink, a memoir (Grand Central Publishing, 2022), longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the forthcoming novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (Grand Central Publishing, 2024), and the forthcoming story collection Leviathan Beach (Grand Central, 2025). His writing has been published in The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army, and The New York Times Book Review. His honors include the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize, and fellowships from Kimbilio, VONA, Tin House and Bread Loaf. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s MFA program in prose, he is earning a PhD in English at The University of Pennsylvania. He is also a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, and teaches courses in Black Studies, Poetics, Video Games, Queer Theory and more at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.